The best defence is to have multiple copies of your precious files in different places. Time Machine is a great first line of defence, but the best way to keep your files safe is to use an off-site backup.

File Syncing

File syncing services are less about specifically backing up your files and more about making your files available on all of your devices. However, the end product is a copy on any computer you have the service installed on, and a copy in the cloud — so they’ll protect your files if something happens to your Mac.

Most services have ways of accessing your pictures and videos – Dropbox has a photos section, Google Drive has Google Photos, and iCloud Drive integrates well with the Photos app with iCloud Photo Library.

Some (like Dropbox) will also keep files you’ve deleted for a set period of time, so you’ll have a chance to recover accidentally deleted files. Some also keep multiple versions of your file in the cloud, so you can revert back to an older version even if you’ve accidentally saved over it. The main advantage to this approach is that you don’t need to think about it once you’ve set it up – anything saved in the folder is automatically backed up.

Its free tier provides 2 GB of storage which should happily store all of your documents, though it’ll run out pretty quickly if you want to use it to store photos or videos. If that’s enough to get you hooked, there’s Dropbox Pro, which runs at $9.99/month for 1 TB of storage.

Google Drive started off as part of Google Docs, its online Office equivalent, but it’s since swallowed them and become a Dropbox equivalent. Like Dropbox, installing Google Drive puts a folder on your computer, with anything in the folder being uploaded to Google’s servers as well as being copied to any other computer signed in to your Google Drive.

And one of the tasks that's included in my to-do list for today is "backup all my projects in google drive". I'll do it later. Promise.

Google Drive gives you 15 GB for free, with the space shared with Google Photos and your Gmail account. You can get 100 GB for $1.99/month, 1 TB for $9.99/month, all the way up to 30 TB for an eye-watering $299.99/month.

While it’s designed primarily for Windows users, Microsoft also makes OneDrive available for Mac users, again providing you a folder which is kept in sync with the cloud. It gives you 5 GB for free and 50 GB for $1.99/month.

I can sleep tonight thanks to @onedrive's backup of my 17-page paper that I somehow forgot to save. Back to constant CNTRL+S habit, I swear.

OneDrive makes a lot more sense if you use Microsoft Office on a regular basis, where you can get an Office 365 subscription (giving you access to the latest version of Microsoft Office) and 1TB of storage for $6.99/month. It gets even better if you share it with your family, where up to five users can use office and get 1TB of storage each for a total of $9.99/month.

SugarSync is a bit different to the other services talked about here. While it’s still a file backup service rather than a system backup service, SugarSync has the distinct advantage of letting you sync files and folders in place rather than having to copy them into a particular folder. That means you can simply choose to sync your Documents and Pictures folders (or your whole Home folder) rather than having to keep them somewhere else.

Unlike the others, SugarSync doesn’t have a free tier, although it does give you 30 days to try it out to see if it works for you. After that it’ll cost $7.49/month for 100 GB, $9.99/month for 250 GB or $24.99/month for 500 GB.

Backup to the Cloud

If you don’t care about accessing your files anywhere at any time and just want a way to backup all of your files automatically, a cloud backup service may be the way to go. Most offer no storage restrictions (you can backup as much as you like). Backblaze and Crashplan, the two services covered below, both have iOS and Android apps that allow you to access your files from their servers, too, so you still have some access

The main downside to cloud backups is getting that first backup uploaded. If you’re uploading all of your files (particularly big collections of photos or home videos), tens or hundreds of gigabytes will take a long time to get into the cloud, particularly if you’re on an ADSL or cable connection that has very slow upload speeds. It’s also very easy to blow through your monthly data quota very quickly if you don’t have an “unlimited” internet connection.

Once you’ve got that first upload done, however, the backup software will keep track of your files and automatically upload any changes straight away. If the worst happens and you need to get your files back, you can either download them yourself for free or, if you need them in a hurry, most services will offer to ship a USB flash drive or external hard drive to you via courier for a reasonable fee.

Backblaze is known for being one of the cheapest options available for unlimited backups, costing just $5/month (or $50/year).

It provides automatic or scheduled backups and keeps unlimited versions of documents for up to 30 days. Its software is simple – you choose what to backup, what not to backup, how often you want to backup, and you’re good to go.

Restoring files happens in the web browser – once you select the files to download, you’re provided with a zip folder which preserves the file structure, which means you can merge the files back to where they belong.

Typing faster than I was thinking and deleted some important files. Had them back in a matter of minutes thanks to @Backblaze!

If you need to restore lots of data in a hurry, you can have up to 128GB sent to you via FedEx for $99 or up to 4TB for $189. If you grab the data and then mail the flash drive or external hard drive back to Backblaze within 30 days, they’ll give you a full refund.

Crashplan also offers unlimited backups. While it’s a little more expensive for a single computer at $5.99/month (or $59.99/year), it offers a family plan which covers 2 to 10 computers for the same price ($13.99/month or $149.99/year) – if you have 3 or more Macs in your home, it breaks even pretty quickly.

Crashplan’s main strength is its flexibility. Where Backblaze only allows you to upload to their servers, Crashplan also allows you to create backups on other computers running Crashplan, like a computer at a relative’s house.

Also significant is the promise to keep deleted files “forever” unless told to delete them, so if it takes you months to realise that you accidentally deleted something, you’re covered.

While Crashplan doesn’t have any options for shipping you data on an external drive, it does handle restoring files better than Backblaze, simply restoring the files in place to where they were before unless you specify otherwise.

Yep, Crashplan makes the list here, as well. If you’re not wanting to use Crashplan’s servers to store your data, they have a free option which you can use to backup to external hard drives and other computers on your local network or remotely (or all of the above!).

The free tier only supports backing up once per day as opposed to continuous syncing, but for most people that should be sufficient (and you can use another service to backup data more regularly to keep your data safe in between).

Remote backups are all encrypted, so you don’t need to worry about people snooping through your data at the other end. The only downside is that in this case you’re using your own internet connection to upload and another person’s internet to download – make sure you both have unlimited connections, or it could add up quickly!

BitTorrent Sync (or just Sync) acts as a sort of roll-your-own SugarSync. You choose folders to sync on your Mac, and you choose a location to save them on other devices. When two or more devices are on and connected to the internet, it’ll make sure all of the contents are synced and stored everywhere. Adding a folder to be synced generates keys which can be entered in on different devices to add them to the syncing pool.

While the default transfer settings allows read and/or write access on every host, there’s an option to set up an encrypted folder sync. If you provide the “encrypted” key rather than a “read only” key or a “read/write” key, the contents of the folder will be transferred (and kept safe) but are inaccessible.

BitTorrent Sync has two tiers for personal use; a free tier which provides all of the functionality above (and enough for setting up simple backup systems), and a Pro tier for $39.99/year per device. The Pro tier automatically adds any new folders to all devices, allows you to selectively sync the contents of folders, gives you enhanced permissions settings as well as extra customer support to make sure that it works. That’s more than you need for backups, but may come in handy for other uses.

Start Backing Your Files Up Offsite Today

Time Machine is great for retrieving fiwles that may have accidentally been deleted, but there are better ways to get you back up and running if you need to replace all of your files.

Of course, you can (and should!) mix and match multiple backup methods, with Time Machine providing a base backup, your documents kept in Dropbox, all of your files stored in Backblaze and keeping a bootable backup with Carbon Copy Cloner. After all, you can never have too many copies of your files!

What do you use to backup your Mac? Is there a service you’d recommend that isn’t listed here? Tell us about it in the comments below!

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Anonymous

May 12, 2016 at 8:17 am

Online backup service consumes laptop battery a lot.
NAS is recommended. (NAS like Synology can be configured to back up to Dropbox etc, hence battery and computing load can be shifted from laptop to NAS).

It'll require the same amount of processing power to calculate which files get copied, and it requires the same amount of power to transmit the data from your laptop.

The difference is that there's a very good chance that your internal network bandwidth is significantly higher than your Internet connection's bandwidth.

So while your laptop will use roughly the same amount of power to copy to your NAS at 80 Mbps or to an offsite server at 8 Mbps, you'll be using that much power 10 times longer to backup offsite.

In this respect, it makes sense to backup to your NAS as quickly as possible and then backup from your NAS to an offsite backup. That way you reduce power consumption on your laptop and have the added bonus of backups in two locations.